The History of Why

Tradition

6 readings

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Madhyamaka

Tradition · 6 readings

Follow a selected argument about emptiness and intrinsic nature, with its account of conventional truth and consequences.

All readings

6 readings · Title A–Z

  • Guided course · Module 7 · Lesson 36

    Debate, commentary and liberation in Tibet

    Tsongkhapa and Gorampa disagree about what emptiness denies. What does their disagreement mean for ordinary objects, and what remains disputed about conventional and ultimate understanding?

  • Guided course · Module 3 · Lesson 12

    Does emptiness mean that nothing exists?

    Nāgārjuna replies to the objection that emptiness would make change impossible: intrinsic nature, he argues, is what would rule change out. Denying intrinsic nature leaves ordinary distinctions, actions and their consequences in place.

  • Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 8 of 8

    Does the argument undermine itself?

    If the claim that everything is empty is itself empty, can it refute anything? The lesson reads the Vigrahavyāvartanī’s dilemma and Nāgārjuna’s replies, compares three readings of “I do not have any thesis” and ends with the study’s final checkpoint.

  • Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 7 of 8

    Is emptiness empty too?

    Is emptiness the true nature behind things, or is it empty too? The lesson follows the image of emptiness as a medicine that must leave the body with the illness, and explains how “neither empty nor non-empty” can be read without contradiction.

  • Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 6 of 8

    What is left of the two truths?

    Once no ultimately real elements remain, what do conventional and ultimate truth mean? The lesson compares three readings of ultimate truth and asks whether conventional claims can still be right or wrong.

  • Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 1 of 8

    What would it mean to exist on one’s own?

    Nāgārjuna argues that nothing has intrinsic nature, a nature it would have independently of everything else. The lesson states the Abhidharma view he opposes as a serious theory, then reads chapter 15’s middle path between “it exists” and “it does not exist”.

Study this in sequence

  • Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths

    Follow Nāgārjuna’s arguments that nothing has an intrinsic nature of its own, from causes and motion to persons, the two truths and the charge that the argument undermines itself. Ask what the arguments leave standing: can things exist, change and matter without such a nature?